“Do I?” he said.

“I made you.”

His flush darkened.  But he gave no other sign of having heard her.

“I don’t know why I’m staying now.”

He rose and looked at his watch.

“I must be going home,” he said.

He turned at the threshold.

“I forgot to give you Mary’s message.  She sent her love and she wants to know when you’re coming again to see the babies.”

“Oh—­some day soon.”

“You must make it very soon or they won’t be babies any more.  She’s dying to show them to you.”

“She showed them to me the other day.”

“She says it’s ages since you’ve been.  And if she says it is she thinks it is.”

Gwenda was silent.

“I’m coming all right, tell her.”

“Well, but what day?  We’d better fix it.  Don’t come on a Tuesday or a Friday, I’ll be out.”

“I must come when I can.”

LX

She went on a Tuesday.

She had had tea with her father first.  Meal-time had become sacred to the Vicar and he hated her to be away for any one of them.

She walked the four miles, going across the moor under Karva and loitering by the way, and it was past six before she reached Morfe.

She was shown into the room that was once Rowcliffe’s study.  It had been Mary’s drawing-room ever since last year when the second child was born and they turned the big room over the dining-room into a day nursery.  Mary had made it snug and gay with cushions and shining, florid chintzes.  There were a great many things in rosewood and brass; a piano took the place of Rowcliffe’s writing table; a bureau and a cabinet stood against the wall where his bookcases had been; and a tall palm-tree in a pot filled the little window that looked on to the orchard.

She had only to close her eyes and shut out these objects and she saw the room as it used to be.  She closed them now and instantly she opened them again, for the vision hurt her.

She went restlessly about the room, picking up things and looking at them without seeing them.

In the room upstairs she heard the cries of Rowcliffe’s children, bumping and the scampering of feet.  She stood still then and clenched her hands.  The pain at her heart was like no other pain.  It was as if she hated Rowcliffe’s children.

Presently she would have to go up and see them.

She waited.  Mary was taking her own time.

Upstairs the doors opened and shut on the sharp grief of little children carried unwillingly to bed.

Gwenda’s heart melted and grew tender at the sound.  But its tenderness was more unbearable to her than its pain.

The maid-servant came to the door.

“Mrs. Rowcliffe says will you please go upstairs to the night nursery, Miss Gwenda.  She can’t leave the children.”

That was the message Mary invariably sent.  She left the children for hours together when other visitors were there.  She could never leave them for a minute when her sister came.  Unless Steven happened to be in.  Then Mary would abandon whatever she was doing and hurry to the two.  In the last year Gwenda had never found herself alone with Steven for ten minutes in his house.  If Mary couldn’t come at once she sent the nurse in with the children.